Application of Space-Based Technologies to Examine Land-Cover/Land-Use Change Along a Transect on the Yamal Peninsula and Novaya Zemlya, Russia

Land cover changes in the Yamal Peninsula region in northwest Siberia are typical of the sorts of changes that are likely to become much more common in tundra areas of Russia and the circumpolar region within the next decade. Currently, gas development is concentrated the Bovanenkovo Gas Field in the central part of the Yamal Peninsula, but there are still large undeveloped areas that are pasturelands to the reindeer of the nomadic Nenets people. The existing oil and gas activities and changes to Russian political-economic structure over the past 30+ years have had profound effects on the social-ecological systems of the Nenets people and the prospect of a rapidly expanding infrastructure network and changes in climate further threaten their way of life. This NASA funded NEESPI project has brought together a collaborative team of US, Russian and Finnish scientists to examine the cumulative effects of resource development, climate change, and traditional land use. The goal is to develop tools to better predict future change by combining scientific and traditional knowledge of the landscapes, detailed field observations, socioeconomic analyses, remote sensing, climate change analyses and vegetation-change models. The larger value of an analysis of cumulative effects on the Yamal Peninsula will be in the lessons learned and the applications of those lessons to other areas of potential development in the Arctic.